


Lost

by AliceBee



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: 19thC Medical Procedure, Aftermath, Angst, Canon Divergence, Denial of Feelings, Dream BDSM, Dream Dubcon, Dubious Consent Fantasy, Graphic Injury/Illness/Wounding, Hurt/Comfort, Javert Lives, M/M, Pining, Post-Seine, Religious Punishment, Self-Loathing, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 01:47:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20107159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceBee/pseuds/AliceBee
Summary: Sometimes, you must lose yourself completely before you can be found.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwelveLeagues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwelveLeagues/gifts).

She had been visiting him every day. She had insisted on doing so and he had felt unable to deny her. It was, after all, his objection to the boy that had almost taken him from her. Between her terrible fear and his burden of guilt, he could do nothing but agree to her pleas.

And so he had spent endless hours in the company of the boy’s guardian. It had quickly become clear to Valjean that the man was as keen as the two youngsters that they be married. It closed a band around his chest and had closed a hand around his throat. The house was huge and bright and airy and he could hardly breathe whilst in there.

Whilst the boy lay unconscious in his bed, all talk was of the wedding. His guardian and Cosette were holding onto the marriage as if it were a certainty; as if their wish for it would be enough to make him well again.

When he began to show signs of improvement, she would not leave when the time came. She was desperate to stay and begged him she be allowed to remain, lest he wake.

As long as Toussaint would stay also, as her chaperone, he had reluctantly agreed that she could stay at the Gillenormand house. He was not going to be able to stay with them. There was an ache in the very marrow of him that was becoming too much to conceal. There was a pain deep inside his chest and a pressure that threatened to stop his breath. He felt an overwhelming need to get outside.

Almost the moment Toussaint arrived, he made his excuses, the crushing pain around his heart unbearable. He fled home, to his now empty house.

He had no use and no desire for another soul’s company. He was bereft and wanted no other comfort than solitude and prayer.

He threw his hat and coat onto a chair and leaned against the fireplace, his head bowed. The ache in his chest began to lessen but it did not abate. 

Lifting his gaze, he reached upward and lit each candlestick in turn. He closed his eyes and prayed for guidance.

As the afternoon slipped darkly into evening, he had found some small consolation. Her happiness, security and joy were the only things that should matter. If the boy should live, as it would now appear he would, those things would be enshrined by their marriage. Then, Valjean supposed, she would at least be free of him. She would live her life no longer held back, deceived or endangered by his past and that was something he should offer thanks for.

He did not eat that night, nor light a fire. He sat, pensive and adrift as midnight passed and a new day crept into being. Throughout the night there were only brief moments of sleep, as he was woken often by troubled, traumatic dreams. Dreams of the lives he had lived and the lies he had told and the crimes he had committed.

As dawn began to lift the room from darkness into gloomy shades of grey, he had come to a decision. Or more properly it might be said he had returned to that which he had made previously.

He looked up at the candlesticks, whose tapers had long since burnt out. They had been with him through so much and they had been the only constant throughout shifting lives and changing names. He brushed the base of one with his fingertips and the cold silver warmed beneath his touch. He would have no use for them now. He would give her everything, as a dowry for her wedding, but these were the only things of real value he could leave her. They were the closest thing that a man who had been born with nothing had to an heirloom.

As the city began to wake, Valjean picked up the coat and hat he had discarded the day before and left his home for what he knew would be the last time.

He set a brisk pace through the streets, past vagabonds and vendors, past the desperate and the destitute. He found he had a few coins about him and he pressed them into eager hands as he made his way to Police Headquarters.

When he stepped inside there was a small line waiting to be seen by the officer at the desk. Valjean felt little. The decision had been taken and, as before, it had felt like a strange sort of peace to have made it.

There was much activity and an air of urgency at the station which Valjean was only dimly aware of. He waited with patience, amongst the citizens, amongst the poor and the less fortunate, until he was finally called forward.

“Monsieur,” the harassed policeman at the desk said, addressing Valjean with a deference he was not due. “How may I be of assistance to you?”

“I should like to see Inspector Javert,” he said.

There was an intake of breath and the officer looked down. “That will not be possible.”

“It is most important that I speak with him.”

“Sir, Inspector Javert… ”

“The Inspector and I have… an unfinished matter that I should like to resolve.”

“Monsieur, the Inspector—” The officer broke off, looked intently at Valjean and seemed to make a decision. “He is missing, these last days and—” 

“Missing?” said Valjean. The word fell from his mouth like a stone. “How so? How… how can he be missing?”

“Are you close to him, sir?” the officer asked, clearly noting his distressed reaction.

“We… have known each other a long time.”

“I am sorry, sir. I do not wish to be the bearer of bad news, but he has not been seen for these last days. There is grave concern for his welfare.”

The officer was continuing to speak, but Valjean hardly heard him.

“Sir,” said the officer. “Sir?”

Valjean stirred from his reverie. The news, so unexpected, had shocked him more profoundly that he would have thought possible. With no Javert, what was he to do? He stood there, numb, his mind refusing to move either his mouth or his body.

“I… Is there no news of him?” he managed to ask after an inordinate silence.

“I am sorry.” The officer looked around and lowered his voice. “Monsieur, his cane and hat were found on the parapet of the _Pont au Change_. He has not been found, however...”

Reeling at the unspoken implication, Valjean shook his head. “This cannot be. It cannot be the case.”

The officer came from behind his desk and helped him to the door. “I am sorry, sir. I wish there was better news.”

Valjean stood on the steps of the station and he felt the vastness of the city stretch and expand before him. The world suddenly felt huge and loud and bright and frightening.

Valjean stumbled homeward, lost and alone in a seething, indifferent city.

* * *

He had woken, coughing and choking and hacking up watery bile in a narrow bed in a small room. Flailing for an instant, he found himself pressed against a rough plaster wall, his palms flat against it, his eyes wide and wild.

Dressed in nothing but a nightshirt and not knowing where he was, he called out in confusion.

The door opposite opened and a large woman shuffled in.

“God be praised,” she said. “You’re awake!”

“Where am I?” he wanted to roar, but the words came out weakly, his voice as thin as the reeds which grew from the riverbed.

“You’re not far from Saint-Marcel. If my son hadn’t seen you on that sandbank, well, you might have been washed all the way to Le Havre by now!”

“Saint-Marcel?” he said to himself. “I should be dead… I did not die?” His felt his body began to shake.

When the waters of the Seine had taken him so swiftly beneath the surface, when his boots and heavy coat had begun to drag him down, when he had finally had to take a breath and that breath was nothing but foul liquid, he was sure, he was certain, that was to be his end.

“You did not. My lad pushed the water out from your stomach. Retching and spluttering you were when he brought you here.”

He had no memory of that, no memory at all. He was exhausted, every inch of him ached, every nerve was trembling. His right knee throbbed like a rotten tooth.

“And you’ve had a raging fever these last days. By the looks of you, it’s broken now, eh?”

He nodded, not sure if that were true. He still felt as though he might shiver off his very skin.

“I need to get to Paris,” he said. “Where are my clothes?”

“Paris! You’ll be lucky to get as far as the farm gate with that leg. I’ve got a stew over the fire. You’ll eat that and get back in bed, if I have a say in the matter.”

He was not used to being spoken to in such a common and direct manner. If he had not been so thoroughly exhausted, he would have challenged the woman as to her tone. Instead Javert fell back against the thin pillows and lay staring at the ceiling, unelated but not ungrateful to be alive.

He considered his situation. Having been spared must have been a sign from God, there could be no other explanation. He should not have survived his leap from the bridge and yet he had been expelled from the waters, found and taken care of and he was awake with his senses intact.

As he lay there, the turmoil that he had tried to silence with that unfinal act began to roil once again across the surface of his brain. The precipice he had leapt from was the second he had fallen from. The first had been the disintegration of the ground he had stood on all his life, the ground that he had _built_ his life on. It had fallen away, revealing an abyss below him, revealing to him the brutal truth of a life built on nothing.

He closed his eyes against the burn of tears, the second time in days after decades of shedding none. Before this, he could not remember the last time he had wept.

It was a physical pain, deep inside and he felt as though he were about to crack open. He laid the crook of his arm over his eyes and sobbed. He sobbed until his head thudded and his soul ached.

Slowly the catch of his breath began to lessen, his tears began to diminish and there was fatigue across his mind, an echo of the exhaustion in his body.

The old woman barged into the room, unannounced. Javert tried to wipe away the evidence of his upset, but she seemed not to notice, or not to care. She was carrying a bowl in one hand and a walking stick in the other. She pressed the large bowl into his hands. It was a basic, thin stew, but the aroma awakened his hunger immediately and his stomach growled. She must have heard it as she laughed.

“Get that inside you, then you can have a hobble about with this if you want to.” She propped the walking stick against the edge of the bed.

“Thank you,” he said, between mouthfuls of food, “and thanks to your son for what he did for me.”

“Where there’s life there’s hope, as my mother used to say.”

Javert turned his gaze towards his meal, utterly unable to cope with the surge of emotions the old woman's words had unknowingly caused. 

* * *

He banged the door shut behind him, shutting out the brightness of the day and enclosing himself in the shuttered darkness of his home. He could not fathom what he had just been told. If they had said the sky was to fall in, he would have been less shocked. 

Valjean felt as though there was an eruption at his feet. The ground was no longer steady, it was a heaving, pitching, rolling thing.

Javert had been a constant in his life for longer than anyone. It was a sad, empty, brutal fact and it stood alone as the longest relationship he had had with anyone. He had known Javert longer than he had know his family, Javert was older than responsibility and older than fatherhood. He had been a real, dangerous, relentless threat. He had stalked him to Montreuil and then harassed and goaded and guilted him to the courthouse in Arras.

Javert was the knife at his ribs, he was the whip at his back, he was the wolf at the door. There had been no peace, no rest and no freedom – not until that moment, those few nights ago, when Javert had inexplicably left him and Valjean had found himself bellowing in the rain.

Some severe calamity must have befallen Javert. For his decades of pursuit to end this way made no sense to Valjean. It disturbed him in a way he was not able to comprehend. 

When he had encountered Javert at the barricade, there was total resignation in Valjean’s mind. He had freely given both his address and his promise that he would not resist arrest. He had thought his life in great danger, that was true, but that was not why he had done it. He had wanted the pursuit to be over, he had wanted the decades of running to be over, he had wanted the lies and the deceit to be over. Javert could have him; he could have his prize and his vindication. There was no reason for Javert to turn him down, it was an open invitation and one he would have expected Javert to grasp greedily.

He had been waiting for that knock at the door ever since. A knock which had never come.

It was simply true that to let go and fall into the waiting hands of Javert would be liberation of sorts. No need to run, or lie, or hide, or flee, he would be no-one again, he would be a number again and in that way, be free.

Valjean was at a loss now; his nemesis was gone, possibly dead. Probably dead.

Tears began to burn behind his eyes. He tried to blink them away, but more welled in their place. He tried to swallow away the knot in his throat, but it remained. What was this? Relief? Grief? Shock? He didn’t know, there were just tears from nowhere. Were they for himself or for Javert or for the daughter he was about to lose? Again, he did not know.

He sank into the chair and cried for long minutes. There was silence in the house, apart from his sobs, and it was a quiet that conspired with the tears. There was no one to offer a word of comfort, or a word of cruelty, there was no one there to soothe his tears or slate them. He felt so alone, so bereft of meaning and direction. He had not felt such an emptiness in years.

Cosette was gone and Javert was gone. They were the two pillars of his life and they had crumbled to nothing within days of each other. The joy of his life and the dread of his heart. The loss of them burned like quicklime. It was something caustic and choking.

That his love for his daughter should cause such pain was unjust. Before Cosette, he had never known such a thing could exist, that such intense pain could live inside love and threaten to break one's heart. Now, she was to leave him for good and that pain had been so appallingly brought to life, it was a cruelty he could scarcely stand.

It was not love between Valjean and Javert - unless it was love that a hare has for the talons of a hawk. Unless it was the love that a beaten dog still shows a harsh master. It was nothing like love and yet it had consumed him just the same. He ached and yearned and hurt just the same. And so it left the same wounds, just in a deeper, darker place he hardly dared admit existed. 

* * *

Javert limped up the steps and the wooden stick tapped in time as he walked slowly down the corridor. The surprised looks as he made his way through the station were largely lost on him. He turned into the main office. The officers in attendance stood on his arrival, confusion and shock moving across their faces. But the one he wanted to see present wasn’t there.

“Rivette… where... Is Rivette here?” he asked.

“Sir, he has been searching these last days, in… the hopes of finding you, sir.”

“Is he back today? Will he be here soon?”

“I do not know, I think he will be pressing on… er... down river, sir.”

Javert nodded. “I see. He’s not here then?”

“Sir,” said his officer, “You seem... unlike yourself. Should you be out of bed?”

“I’m fine. I am here, am I not?” 

Javert made his way to his side-office. There was a clean uniform stored there along with a place to wash. It was also somewhere to try to recover his disappointment at not finding Rivette in attendance.

He had not noticed how he had come to rely on the officer, how his constant presence had become something that Javert found to be almost necessary. It had taken great effort to get to Paris, an even greater effort for him to gather up what was left of his nerves and walk into a station he had left in disarray just a few nights’ before. He did not know what the men knew. He supposed Rivette knew or suspected more than most. He could only hope that his trusted right hand would soon appear, if they could only send him news of his return. 

He got out of his Seine-steeped clothes. The farm woman had rinsed them off and dried them out, but the stench of the river clung to the very fibres, or so Javert thought. He didn’t want that next to his skin and the chance to dress in unsullied linen was one he was keen to get done.

The clean clothes made him feel so much better. The collar was starched, the lines were pressed and the buttons had been recently polished. They were not dented or tarnished by a battering in the river’s swell. The fit wasn’t as snug as it should have been as he had lost some little weight, but nonetheless, he felt stiffened by the uniform, as if he was being held up by it. He needed to feel that. The uniform and what it represented were now all that was holding him together.

He glanced at himself in the looking-glass but only for a fleeting moment. He was unable to hold his own eyes. He left the small room and once again entered the main office.

His cane and hat lay across his desk. He propped the old walking stick against the wall and sat down. He set aside his hat and his silver-tipped cane. As he did so, an acknowledgement tightened his chest. Someone had retrieved those things from the bridge and set them there, as if sure of his return. Someone who had more faith in him than Javert himself, it would appear.

He opened his desk drawer and saw his long, rambling discourse had not been passed to the commissioners as he had instructed. He expected to feel a flare of anger at Rivette for disobeying his order, but all he felt was a wash of relief. Having read the first few lines, he felt little but shame and confusion. He put the paper back in his desk and then didn’t know what to do.

Once back in Paris, there had been little question that he would return straight to the station. Where else would he go? What else was there to do? Yet, now he was back, he felt as lost as he had on waking in that farmhouse.

It was not that he was going to pretend that nothing had happened. It was more that he had thought that getting back to who he was and what he knew would somehow re-establish his centre. The hull of his ship had heeled over but the weight and import and gravitas of his position should have been enough to right it. It would seem, however, that was an unfounded hope. The ballast that had been the very foundation of his stability had shifted so utterly, it had almost cost him his life, and sat in the station, he still felt far off-balance, as if he was listing severely, the decks of his mind slanting off, slipping sideways.

It was hard for him to hold onto his train of thought and he was still not fully able to confront what he had done, or what it was he had attempted to do. The sin was so huge, it was like trying to drink down a whole ocean of guilt and shame and he could not do it. They were not emotions he was used to and he was sick at heart with the weight of them.

If he could get back to work, to some sort of routine, if he could re-immerse himself in his life before, he could perhaps regain his grip on all that he felt had been lost to him. His certainty, his rectitude and his duty, all these things had been thrown into the torrent and had emerged from the waters as battered and lifeless as he had.

He tried to focus. At least now he was back at the station, he had on a clean uniform, he was where he knew he was needed. He could at least now attempt to right some of the wrongs he had perpetrated that fateful night.

His decision to essentially free Valjean by instructing his driver to proceed to the station had been one made from a place of distress and confusion and profound dissonance.

Javert still felt upended by the whole situation, but if there was a chance for redemption in the eyes of his men and his superiors and not least of all himself, then that insanely irrational and reckless act needed to be rectified.

Resolute, he picked up his hat and cane and left for number seven, rue de l’Homme-Armé.


	2. Chapter 2

The knocking had become insistent. No longer able to ignore it in the hope they would go away, Valjean got wearily to his feet and swung open the heavy wooden door.

Truly the last person he had thought to see was stood before him.

Javert.

A strange cold thrill ran through him, a sour shock of recognition and resignation that was twisted with something that flipped his stomach over.

He was alive then and had come for him after all.

Valjean had asked for guidance and direction and he supposed this was deliverance of a sort.

He felt that Javert was staring into him. Those eyes were somehow deeper, a little sunken, his cheeks a little hollow. His mood was unreadable.

For a time, both men were unmoving until Valjean took a step to one side and allowed Javert to pass. The man needed to use that cane of his for more than display as he was limping heavily as he entered.

“May I collect my coat and hat before we leave?” Valjean asked.

Javert looked at him, his expression unchanged from the hollow mask that had greeted Valjean at the door. “What?”

Valjean nodded. “Of course, I shall not be in need of them.” He set his shoulders and held out his hands before him, awaiting the cold click of metal that would shortly be closed around them.

Javert face slowly began to fade from the blank, hollow mask to one that registered confusion. “What are you doing?” he said, frowning down at Valjean’s hands.

“For my arrest,” Valjean said, his words slow and uncertain. He began to see that same uncertainty reflected in Javert’s faltering mask. “I cannot run anymore. I do not wish to run. I am done, sir.”

That confused expression did not change, nor was there any response.

Valjean felt compelled to try to explain further. “I have made a kind of peace with the life I have lived. It is far from perfect, but when I said you could find me here, in was in the hope of atonement for a life of sin and lies.”

Javert looked back down at Valjean’s hands and nodded but did not immediately fetch out the handcuffs.

Valjean did not know what had happened to this man, but something had seriously affected his bearing. There was something so very off about him. His whole demeanour was different. There was none of his virulent resolve, he was not barking orders or smugly lording his superiority. This was not the Javert that had dogged him all these years. It was simply not the same man.

Javert nodded again and said, almost to himself, “I am still a police officer.”

He unbuttoned his greatcoat and reached beneath the folds. He brought out the cuffs and after a moment of hesitation, he snapped them closed over Valjean’s wrists.

Valjean lowered his hands, the iron settling its cold, harsh bite upon his skin. It was a familiar sensation but it still had the power to make him shudder.

Javert was now doing nothing, a frown still embedded on his forehead. 

“I should not have left you those several nights ago… I do not think… I am not sure as to…”

Javert put his hand to his head, confused. He was leaning on his cane and for the first time in all the years he had known him, it struck Valjean how very _small_ Javert was. Especially now, as he seemed swallowed by his coat and swamped by his uniform. He was swaying very slightly, as if it were becoming a struggle to remain upright.

“Are you unwell?” Valjean asked. He felt as though he should reach out to steady the man, but given their history and the current situation, it did not seem possible. “You should sit,” he said, gesturing with his shackled hands to the pair of chairs by the fireplace.

Javert turned his head to look at them as if they were the first he had seen in his life.

“Sit, please,” said Valjean again.

The man limped over, sat down and seemed to entirely fold in on himself. Swaddled as he was, Valjean was again struck by how slight Javert looked, like a lost child wrapped in an adult’s coat who had been brought in off the street.

“You were—” Javert bit down on the word and corrected himself. “You _are_ a criminal, but I… cannot… At the barricade…” Javert looked up at him, his eyes haunted by something he was not able to say.

Valjean recalled Javert’s terror and then his utter confusion, Valjean almost having to chase him from the room at gunpoint. He also then recalled the words he had spoken to him, ‘Do you want to die?’ and, ‘You’ll have to arrange it yourself’. Valjean closed his eyes, guilt drawing over his vision like a veil.

“I did not mean for you to take those words so deeply to heart. I should never have expected that… never. If I have compelled you—“

“If? IF? It is _only_ you who have done this. You!”

Mad with sudden strength he leapt up, grasping the cane by the shaft as he pressed its heavy silver head into Valjean’s throat. A flicker of heat skittered across Valjean’s skin, the pressure and Javert’s intensity sending his thoughts spiralling. As his breathing became pained, Valjean leaned back, away from the cold silver and its disturbing effects. The head of the cane slipped downwards and Javert burst of strength was spent. It came to rest weakly in the centre of Valjean’s chest.

“It was you… it was only you!” Javert cried, tears welling in his eyes. He lifted the cane and hit it into Valjean, but it was an exhausted gesture with no force behind it. He hit him again as he began to lose control. As he began to weep, he fell back into his chair, his head buried in his hands.

Valjean did not know what to do with this outpouring of emotion. He was clearly to blame in some large degree for the distress and disaster that had befallen Javert, but he was at a loss as to how to console him.

“This is all because of you,” Javert sobbed. “You stand there, you don’t even know what you’ve done.”

The tears were still wracking through him and all Valjean could do was avert his gaze and wait until this remarkable display was over.

After at time, Javert’s crying fit began to trail off and he slowly gained some measure of control. He mopped his face using his own large handkerchief and silently accepted the offer of Valjean’s own.

“I had not expected this,” Javert said, his voice still choked with emotion. He was not looking at Valjean, but he was able to see tears still shone in those dark, sunken eyes.

“It is of no matter,” said Valjean, taking the seat next to Javert. “I do not know in any detail what has occurred, only that for my part, it was not my intention to cause such troubles as you have had. My words… They are often rough and carelessly spoken.”

Javert looked up at him. “Your words? Your _words_?” he shouted. “Your words are as nothing. _Nothing_, do you hear?”

“I hear,” said Valjean, seeking to calm Javert. “Yet, I fear I do not understand.”

“It is what you have done, hear that? Understand _that_? It is what you have _done_ that has… What has brought me to this.”

What could he have possibly done that would cause such a man as Javert to try to take his life? Valjean had no clue.

“At the barricade… I was certain, _certain_, that you would kill me. I was as good as dead… In my own mind, when I saw you with that pistol, I was dead.” His eyes became unfocused. “Do you know what that is like… to know you are going to die?”

Valjean considered the question. “I have often thought it likely or possible, but perhaps never as close as certainty.”

Javert nodded at this. “Before that moment, I would have said the same. I fear… when you… when you freed me…” He spoke the words with wonder and with reverence and with a welling of emotion. “I fear that something in me has been broken.”

It was a long time before either of them spoke. Javert was struggling to keep the tears from falling again and Valjean was searching his mind for some purchase on the events. It seemed so hopeless and wrong, that someone should take such a bleak and desolate action following an act of mercy. 

“I don’t understand,” Valjean said. “I am sorry, but I do not know what I have done.”

Javert was looking at him in anguish.

“When I… saw you again, I could not keep those broken parts together.” He stared at his hands as if they held the shattered remnants of a vase. “I did not know what else to do. I have come back but it is all wrong. Everything is wrong. I came back. I am still a police officer. I am still that. I thought if I put that right, the insanity of letting you go, that would help. But it has not. _It has not._”

Javert fell silent. Valjean did not have a single word he felt able to say, so the silence ran on for a time.

“All I have wanted was to have you in custody. All these long years, it is all I have wanted.” Javert closed his eyes and tears fell. “Then, when I had you, finally, I had you... I could not take you in. Do you know why?”

Valjean shook his head.

“You did not _deserve it_.” Javert laughed harshly, seemingly still in disbelief. “I think I saw you for the first time that night. At the barricade, I think… I think I was too shocked to understand but—“ He nodded to himself. “That was when the cracks began to run. And then that night, it was like I saw you for the first time. Covered in filth and in shackles, I saw that you were a better man than me. How could that be?” he asked, his pained eyes bright with tears, perspiration standing out on his forehead. “How can that be?”

Valjean could feel Javert’s eyes desperately on his own, searching for something he could not give him.

“I cannot have any answers for you,” he said, eventually. “I am all those things you said I was in Toulon. I did all the things you said I would do.”

“I see it now. I could not or would not before. I… I feel… What I saw was inexplicable. I saw you were a good man and that could not be.”

“I cannot understand why this has undone you so. In Montreuil. What happened in Arras. You must have known, to play on it... with such precision.”

Javert shook his head. “I saw a way to force a criminal to confess. I saw what I wanted to see, I did not think as to why. Only now, I see it for what it was. The cruelty of it, for you, for the man…”

“Champmathieu,” said Valjean. The man’s name, his terrified eyes and his desperate, ridiculed pleas were all burned into Valjean’s soul. It made him feel sick to think of it.

“See? I don’t even remember his name. I didn’t care about him, or who he was, or what he’d done. I saw a way to get at you and even when you turned up in court and when you actually confessed, still I didn’t see.”

Valjean sighed deeply and looked to the mantelshelf. He wanted to light the candles and pray with Javert, but he was not sure if his unexpected guest would be amenable.

Javert was now leaning forward, both hands on the head of his cane, trying to still their shaking. “All you needed to do to be free for the rest of your life... was nothing.”

“Inspector, after searching my soul that was not a possibility.”

Javert looked up to the ceiling, his face lined in pain. “And this I did not ever consider, that there could be no confession without a conscience. Nothing compelled you to that courthouse but your own character, but all I saw was my vindication. I had my victory and I believed it was my guile that had forced your hand. My guile.” He laughed bitterly, his mouth drawn into a grimace.

This torrent of self-loathing and self-abasement from Javert was astonishing to witness and deeply troubling to try to answer. Words had never come easily to Valjean and he was struggling to find something to say that might comfort Javert in his distress.

“I look back at that now and my heart wants to split.” Javert thumped his chest, sweat standing on his brow. “I know… I _know_ I would not have done as you did. I am not who I believed I was. I am not _what_ I believed I was.”

“Javert, please, you are upsetting yourself.”

“I know now I am a coward. I have seen my true face because you have shown it to me.”

“This is all from years ago, from a half a lifetime ago. How could it not occur to you before now?” Valjean asked.

“In all those years, I swear to you, it did not. And it has smashed me to pieces, that in all this time I did not see. I did not believe you had changed, I could not even think it. You were a criminal, a convict. It was not possible. It was against all natural law. This is what I _knew_ to be true… and then… it was not.”

Javert was looking at him with the most open and helpless expression Valjean had ever seen.

“We spoke of such things in Montreuil many times,” said Valjean. “I know you to have been… steadfast in your views. If God has chosen to show you there is another path, can you not embrace that?”

“God? God has done this thing to me? This cannot be God, it—“

“I can tell you, M. Javert, that it is not an easy path. But to know you are wholly within God’s grace is a great source of strength and comfort. You say you are a coward, but I do not think you are.”

Javert’s expression was half-way between disbelief and hope, a deep frown creasing his forehead.

“How can you say these things?” he muttered, his eyes fluttering closed. “Your life has been an endless cruelty.”

Valjean considered Javert’s words and he found himself shaking his head. “It has not. It has been a hard life, but I have known joy and love and have had God’s grace in my life.” He looked at Javert, he looked deep into his eyes. “I thought such things were for other men. But if they could be for me, I know they can be for any man.”

Valjean heard himself say those words and felt moved by them as if they had been said by someone else. He had not realised that in telling his truth to Javert, he would be hearing it himself for the first time.

Javert was blinking slowly and his whole face was slick with sweat. He was trying to speak but Valjean could no longer understand what he was saying. Javert tried again to form a word, but all that emerged was a huff of breath as his head dropped and his cane slipped from his grip.

Valjean was up on his feet in a moment. As the man passed out, he caught Javert’s shoulder in his shackled hands, preventing him from falling from the chair. He set him back in the seat and pressed the back of one of his hands to Javert’s brow. Wet with sweat and burning hot, it was clear Javert was feverishly ill.

Valjean searched the pockets of Javert’s coat until he found his keys. He unlocked the handcuffs and set them to one side.

Lifting him easily, Valjean stood Javert against him and pulled off his greatcoat and jacket. He then hoisted him up over his shoulder. With his right arm braced across the back of Javert’s knees, he carried him upstairs.

Valjean laid him in his own bed and took off his boots, discarding them into the corner of the room. When he pulled off Javert’s breeches, he saw there was a bandage around his right knee. He was also confronted with the unmistakable smell of infection.

Valjean unwound the bandage and saw there was a deep gash in the side of Javert’s knee. It was weeping yellow fluid and the edges of the wound were ragged and tinged with a dark purple-red. These fed tendrils of dark, tainted blood into the pure red heart of the wound. 

Javert turned his head towards Valjean. His eyes were half-open but they were rolled back in their sockets. Valjean pulled the covers over his shivering body and fetched more blankets from the cupboard.

The wound would need to be cleaned and re-dressed. Valjean went down to the pantry where he knew there was days’ old bread. He took a bowl and broke up the bread that was tinged with blue-green mould. Then he took down a pot of honey and mixed in two large spoonful's. Next he shook in a good quantity of oats which would bind the mixture. He stirred it together until a thick, gooey poultice had been formed.

Back in his room, Valjean tore an old sheet into strips. He set them down next to the poultice and brought in a bowl of water. He cleaned the wound as deeply as he could, wiping away the dead and dying flesh, which came away with unpleasant ease. When Valjean could see no more decay, when he had cleaned away as much of the infection as he was able, he packed the laceration with the poultice. He worked it into the torn edges and ensured the whole wound was covered over. He bandaged it all in place and drew the blankets over Javert.

Once he had been settled, Valjean went onto the street and found a young boy keen to run an errand.

"Fetch the doctor," Valjean said, passing over a coin. "Tell him it's a fever and infection and to come quickly. There's another piece for you when you bring him here."

The boy nodded and ran off.

Valjean went back inside. He would need to try to get Javert to eat and drink something. He decided to make a thin porridge that could almost be drunk. He used the cream from the milk and heated it with the oats. He stirred in more honey and then took it up to Javert.

He sat him up in bed and began to spoon the thin, sweet mixture into Javert's mouth. He had opened his eyes and there was some recognition there. Valjean carefully tipped the spoon, tilting its contents into Javert's mouth.

"Can you take it?" Valjean asked, offering the spoon and bowl to Javert.

He took to spoon, but then his hand dropped to the covers. He had no strength. Valjean took over and once again, he carefully fed the porridge to Javert, spoon by spoon until the bowl was almost empty. Javert eventually turned his head away, having had enough, and he made a sound, like a small animal but didn't speak.

"I'll let you rest awhile," said Valjean. "I have sent for the doctor, he should be here shortly."

He left the room and cleaned up the bowls and the pantry. There was little more he could do, other than pray, so that was what he did.

Valjean lit the candles and prayed. He did not know what the arrival and collapse of Javert meant. He hoped to gain some guidance whilst awaiting the more earthly assistance of the local doctor.

His arrival was announced by a rapid knocking at the door. Valjean opened it to the eager boy, panting from his run with Dr Courtois in tow. Valjean gave the boy the rest of his wage and the child careened off up the street.

"Thank you for coming so quickly," said Valjean.

"Hmm, I had little choice," said the doctor, with some humour. "Your messenger was most persuasive."

"Will you come upstairs?" Valjean said.

"Can you tell me what has happened?"

Valjean lead the doctor up to his room and the semi-conscious Javert.

"I don't know the details. He has a wound on his leg that is infected. He came here earlier today, but became feverish and passed out."

Dr Courtois inspected the wound, having moved aside the poultice. He looked up at Valjean.

"A country remedy, I see," he said, archly.

"I remembered it from when I was a boy. Did I do wrong?" Valjean asked anxiously.

"Not wrong, there is much in the old remedies." He re-bandaged the injury, leaving the poultice in place. "But there are more modern ways to go about these things."

The doctor opened his bag and brought out a large glass jar, stoppered with a heavy lid. Inside swam a dozen or so leeches.

"He has a severe imbalance of the humours. If we can bleed out the overheated blood, it will cool his body and restore the natural order. And these fine fellows are thirsty for their work."

Dr Courtois set the jar on the bedside table, removed Javert's shirt and then took off the lid. He picked out the first leech with a pair of tongs and set it on Javert's forearm. He placed the rest of the leeches about his body, on his chest, on his belly, on his legs. Javert hardly responded, there was just a flicker of his eyes and then he was deeply asleep once again.

The doctor had left the sheet pulled across his modesty, but otherwise Javert was naked in his bed. Valjean watched in awful fascination as the thin, writhing worms settled down onto Javert's finely muscled body. Once wedded to their task, they began to drink. He could see how they had latched on, a ring of blood having formed at the junction of their circular jaw and Javert's skin. They began to grow in front of Valjean's eyes, their dark, glistening bodies swelling and pulsing as they took on the infected heat from Javert.

After a short while, the first of the leeches detached and fell onto the bed. A thin trail of blood ran from the wound on Javert's arm. The doctor pressed a piece of gauze to the tiny wound and did the same as each leech became sated and fell from Javert’s body. The doctor returned his leeches to their jar and packed up his bag.

"He should rest now. Keep the windows closed and cool him with damp cloths. He may need a further treatment tomorrow, so I will be along about this time, if that is amenable.” 

"Thank you, Doctor, it will be."

He paid the fee and let the doctor out.

Valjean sat up with Javert for the rest of the day and into the night, laying cooling cloths on his forehead and wiping down his arms and legs, trying to draw out some of that heat. He found this action, this intimacy, was creating a heat of its own within his own body. He did not think he was becoming sick but the sensation of Javert's firm, lean body beneath his hands was charged with an undeniable heat. It was something dense and thick and heavy, like an oppressive August afternoon that would sweat and bleed into an unbearable, airless night.

He tried to keep his mind off such things, but each time he each time he ran the damp cloth down Javert's arms, down his thighs, around the curve of his skull to press the cooling rag to the back of his burning neck, he felt that heat transfer to the core of him. It unwound there, burrowed in, having awoken something in him with its heat. He tried to push away the thoughts and urges but he could feel them running through his veins, coursing through his mind, pulsing and thudding and demanding he surrender to them.

He tried to crush the thoughts, as if they were merely a nuisance to be swatted like an insect. But they were not. They were sinuous and fluid and tough and wiry and what ever he tried, whatever distraction he managed, he found that carnal thoughts of Javert would soon coil around them and take over. He would batter them away, only for them to return at a moment's unguarded notice.

When he drew the damp cloth down Javert's chest, he could feel the rise and fall of his breath, when he paused he could feel the rapid beat of his heart and all Valjean wanted was to move his mouth over those places. He wanted to feel that firm, tight skin beneath his lips, to taste the hot salt of Javert's sweat. He wanted to bite and to go lower, to trail his lips and tongue down the flat of his belly, down the ridges of that muscular stomach into the line of dark hair and then deeper down, down to that which led to his most intimate place. That which the doctor had covered had remained so, that which Valjean did not dare expose. He wanted so much to take Javert in his mouth, he wanted to caress him with his tongue and make him arch and moan and…

Valjean shook himself, disgusted by the base desire that had taken so severe a hold. To have these thoughts must mean he had a sickness of a sort; to think such things of _Javert_ and whilst he was so ill was repulsive. He battled these thoughts, berating his weakness and cursing the ache that had settled in the core of him.

In the early hours, sleep finally took his mind and dreams rushed forth, unbidden and unchecked.

~~~

_He is somewhere dark and hot. His arms are shackled above his head and he is stripped to the waist. It was his fault. There is no one else to blame and he knows that of all the things he has done, this is the worst. He also knows Javert is there, prowling in the shadows._

_He is due whatever is coming to him, but he is being made to wait. Javert has held him in this horrible anticipation, vulnerable to whatever punishment he deems suitable, for what feels like days._

_The room is airless and the heat unbearable. Sweat runs down his body, slow and maddening, then he feels the tips of Javert’s fingers delicately trace the path of one drop. He shivers, his whole body suddenly alive to that teasing caress. And then there is nothing but the darkness and the heat and the shame and the certainty of pain to come. _

_~~~_

_He drags the cross through the streets. Montreuil cobbles and Toulon chains conspire and they bring him to his knees. Sickened by his crimes and disgusted by his lies, the crowd jeer, baying for blood and justice. The whip falls across his back. He struggles to his feet, setting his shoulder into the apex of the cross. He lifts it, though his every muscle has to labour against its massive weight. He has carried heavier, but never for so long. He has been on this path, bent beneath the cross, for a decade or more. He knows this and yet he also knows it has only been one day._

_He struggles on, his back, his arms, his legs burning with the effort. His breath is ragged, his heart is pounding. He stumbles again and the cobbles and the chains bloody his shins. On his hands and knees, his head is down and he pants like a dog. The whip licks fire across his back, once, twice until again he settles the cross onto his shoulder and staggers onward._

_The street opens out and the town square is filled with faces twisted with hate and disgust. They are yelling for his death, desperate for blood and revenge. He is exhausted and there is nothing but pain and shame and the terror of a lingering, agonised death. _

_In the centre of the square the cross is taken from him and laid on the ground. Hardly able to stand, the chains are removed and his bagne rags are torn from him. The crowd cheer the sight of his naked body, beaten and bloodied. His arms are seized and he is made to lie down on the cross. He offers no resistance, he has none to give. He knows this is the fate of thieves. His arms are pulled to the side and held down. Rope is tied, binding him tightly to the cross. They hold his legs, knees forced to bend, so that his feet cross over. Once he is bound in position the men retreat. _

_He rests as best he can against the hard, unforgiving oak; it is not so difficult, he had slept on such for decades._

_He sees the nails and his body tenses. He recognises the long, square-topped iron spikes. They are a shipwright’s nail. The sort that might be used to patch and repair a rotting galley. He looks up at the sky, blue and cloudless, the sun blistering down. He feels the point of two nails, one against each upturned wrist. He takes a breath and tries not to scream when the hammers fall. The pain is stark and cruel and brutal, as iron is driven deep between bones. He throws his head back, the tendons in his neck like wires, his body writhing in shock and pain. His wrists thud in bloody time with his hammering heartbeat. He feels that same point of pressure on his ankle and then that same slam of pain as the nail is driven through. He cannot hold back this time. He screams as bone breaks beneath the pressure of the iron point. He feels it pass through and he hears how the sound changes as the nail hits the oak. He feels it too, as the echoes of each blow resound through the wood they jar the nails that are drilled through his wrists._

_When they begin to raise him, the crowd roars it approval. As they lift him, he begins to slip down the cross. The pressure on his ankles is agonising, the wrenching at his wrists is unbearable. As he is lifted to the vertical, the pain and distress and the struggle to breathe are immediate. There is no period of grace._

_He hangs by nails and rope, his body dragged down by itself. He must lift himself to breathe. His hands clench helplessly and he hears himself moan as he pulls himself up. His exhausted muscles quake with the effort. The nails drill jagged agony through his arms and legs. The crowd stare up, drinking in his naked torment as he exhales a stammering breath._

_Under the midday sun his whole existence has shrunk down to breath and pain. His mind is saturated in suffering and he is consumed by the impossibility of bearing this for one more moment. He hangs there, helpless, his body braced against the cross, and it has been hours or minutes or mere seconds, he cannot tell._

_~~~_

_He is flat on his back, his arms having been tied to the table he is lying on. He is naked and his ankles are being likewise bound to the table. He has no strength and cannot move. His limbs feel like stone or lead, they are heavy and cold. He lies there as those that had held him scatter into the shadows. Javert approaches and he has in his hands not a pair of pistols, but Valjean’s own precious candlesticks. He sets them down either side of Valjean’s head and leans over him._

_“It is all because of you,” he says, grim faced and hollow-eyed. “It is all your fault.”_

_He lights the first candle and holds it close to Valjean’s chest. He shifts his body away from the flame, but Javert moves it closer. His skin begins to redden and then blister. He grits his teeth as Javert moves the flame slowly down the side of his ribs and then lifts the candle and drips molten wax over blistered skin. The pain is exquisite agony and Valjean twists against his bonds, a cry of pain held behind his lips._

_“It’s all your fault,” says Javert. “It is what you deserve.”_

_He draws the base of the flame along the centre of Valjean’s chest and down his stomach. Skin and hair singe, then burn. He holds the candlestick higher. Wax spatters in the wake of the flame, searing and sealing in random patches of pain. Javert leans in and presses his mouth over one of the open burns. Valjean gasps. Javert’s hot, wet tongue keens over the raw nerves and it is making him shudder in pleasure. It should not be, but he cannot help but respond to Javert as he mouths his way lower. He rolls his head as he begins to stiffen as Javert’s mouth is taking him in. He tries to say no, but his pleas are to himself, not Javert. His whole body is alive with heat, the burns sting and scream, but the real heat is now throbbing between his legs. Javert licks him from tip to root and he can’t help but lift his hips. He pulls against the ropes, straining to press himself deeper and deeper._

_Javert is sucking him softly whilst his hands run along Valjean’s ribs, scratching off wax, searching out burns. _ _Pain and pleasure blur as Javert rakes his nails over Valjean’s blistered body. All the while his tongue works and kneads and probes. Shame is not enough to stop him bucking harder into Javert’s mouth. He cannot stop and he feels himself slip further, deeper, into the back of Javert's open throat. He moans and wants to feel it again. He is close to losing himself, in the pain and his building climax. The two twine together, impossible to separate and as he comes, jolting and gasping into Javert’s mouth, he cannot help but begin to weep._

~~~

Valjean took some time to wash and change his clothes. He felt deep guilt and shame at the sordid dreams that had riven his sleep. He had not woken as he had on previous nights, he had dreamt and slept and slept and dreamt. He did not want to think of them, but they had been intense and real and they had not faded as many dreams will. Their nature was deeply upsetting and they had stayed with him, taunting and cajoling and demanding his attention.

He was disgusted with himself and had scrubbed at his body as if he could clean off his sin with only soap and water. He felt too filthy to dare touch the Bible, though he craved the comfort he knew it would give him. He did not pray either, although he was desperate for that solace too. Instead he took any book from the shelf and sat with Javert, not taking in one word of what he was reading.

At least Javert seemed better. He was not fully awake, but to Valjean he did not seem as restless or as feverish.

The doctor came mid-morning and was pleased with Javert’s progress. There was a further bleeding but if he continued to improve, that would be all he would require. There was little else to do but wait and watch and so Valjean kept vigil, not wanting to leave Javert alone.

By the late afternoon he was awake and had eaten a small meal. He still seemed weak, but he was no longer shaking and sweating. Valjean was relieved beyond words and he did not dare to know why. This man should not be consuming his mind and should certainly not be overwhelming his dreams and affecting his body. It did not seem to matter how often he pushed them away, they would creep and move until, once again, it was all he could think of.

“I am much recovered,” Javert said as Valjean took his tray.

“I am glad,” he said, turning quickly away.

“I will be down shortly,” Javert said. “Can you bring my cane?”

Valjean looked at him, trying to ignore the ache deep in the pit of his stomach. “If you are sure.”

“I am.”

“Then certainly.”

He went downstairs and retrieved the cane. It was heavy, ornate and a status symbol, no doubt. Valjean swallowed, awkward at the memory of it crushing into his throat. Again, he pushed away those intrusive thoughts and took the cane into Javert. He was strangely sorry and yet hugely relieved to have it out of his hands. 

Valjean then waited downstairs, pacing, sitting, then pacing again. He heard halting footsteps and then the bedroom door. He heard Javert descending the stairs and took a breath as he entered the room.

They stood, looking at each other and then not looking at each other.

Javert was in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat and he nodded towards his jacket and greatcoat that were still draped over the chair.

“Of course,” said Valjean, hurrying to help Javert into them.

When his fingers brushed Javert’s shoulder, he was sure he felt Javert react. There was an almost imperceptible straightening of the man's back. Valjean retreated immediately, putting several steps between himself and the Inspector.

Javert was again leaning heavily on his cane and he still looked small in his greatcoat but, somehow, he did not seem as lost. 

The two men stood in silence.

The handcuffs still lay open on the table where Valjean had discarded them those few days ago. He looked down at them. Javert followed his gaze and looked down at them too. He looked up at Valjean and Valjean looked at Javert.

Neither man spoke. Neither man moved.

The End


End file.
